Humphreys was miseducated at La Trobe University where he read Modern and Ancient History. He spent two years writing and performing in comedy plays and doing stand-up before deciding that he should be writing novels. And so he has spent the last few years gallivanting around Europe and America and Southeast Asia, telling strangers of his genius. He is, in reality, not a very tall person.

In 2015 he published his first novel, Waxed Exceeding Mighty. For five weeks he smuggled copies of it into London bookstores and exhorted his social media followers to steal them. Thus was born #stealthisnovel. He is extremely fond of canteloupe. The ferocity of his tap-dancing is unrivalled, except in China, where his style is derided as only semi-ferocious. His favourite films are Lethal Weapon 2 and Dragonheart.

In 2009 Humphreys travelled to East Africa, where he was one of the first white men to see an ostrich eat nails. He was for a brief interlude in 2011 the wolfcatcher royale to His Highness The Duke of Bavaria and later that year went to Capri, where he assaulted a woman in the forehead with a crayfish. In 2013 he travelled through Central America—in Belize was taught how to make rice wine from a donkey’s unhappiness, and in Guatemala learned that wearing weasel’s testicles as a necklace is more of a superstition than a contraceptive.

In February 2016 he released his second novel, Exquisite Hours, selling out four print-runs of inscribed and numbered copies in six weeks.

He is fluent in Armenian, Cherokee, and Gibberish, and can read Latin, though he does not know what any of the words mean. He may or may not work for MI6 and can run really, really fast. He is a qualified mahout. He is very happily banned from France. He has not ever lost at paper-scissors-rock. And despite his own frequent assertions he is neither Mel Gibson’s son nor Hugh Jackman’s nephew.

He currently divides his year between London, Italy and Vietnam. He would divide it between his heirs, but he has none.